Disable FX Tracks

Coming from Pro Tools this was a huge disappointment. I really need the ability to disable an FX track. I have a large template in Pro Tools that I spent a week setting up in Cubase. In my template I have all the routing setup with reverbs and delays already inserted in the FX tracks. In Pro Tools I could disable the Aux tracks which are the closest thing to FX tracks. That way I could have the sends in the session and have all the other tracks setup to route to them. All the routing would be disabled and with the disabled Aux tracks I wouldn’t incur a hit on my CPU . Once I’m ready to mix then I can enable the FX tracks and start sending audio to them from my instrument, group and other tracks. If I could disable the FX tracks then I could ensure no processing power was being used by them until I was ready to enable them.

Hi,

Maybe I am not understanding you request, but couldn’t you just bypass the insert chain on each FX channel until you are ready for it? You can bypass the entire insert chain by clicking on the blue circle in the insert section of the mix console. It turns yellow to let you know that it is in bypass mode. This will lower you CPU utilization.

I hope this helps and sorry if this wasn’t what you were looking for.
FX Bypass.JPG

When a plugin is bypassed it will not process any audio, however, it still has to remain active because u can modify knobs, faders, switches, etc. So, even when something is bypassed it is still taking up computer resources. Cubase offers the ability to deactivate some types of tracks so that they don’t take up any resources while still being present in your session. However, FX tracks can’t be deactivated. So, then that means if if you have plugins inserted on an FX track, even if they are all bypassed (which they are in my case) they are still taking up resources.

Yes, bypassing doesn’t off-load as much CPU as inactivating them. You can inactivate an individual plugin by alt clicking (for Windows - I think option click for Mac) on the plugin. If you use long fx chains this would take longer to do but if you only use one or two fx per channel this would go pretty quickly. I am not aware of a way to disable the whole channel.

I know others have asked for this same feature previously and I am not aware of this being added. I hope you get it implemented at some point.

Thanks for letting me know how to inactivate a plugin, I’ll give that a try. In the absence of the ability to just deactivate the track that will do for now.

You’re welcome and good luck with your request.

I just wanted to let you that the knowledge you provided me about turning an insert on/off vs. bypass opened up a whole new world to me. I have several group tracks in my template that I want enabled so I can adjust faders while I compose. I want some pre-configured dynamics processors inserted on the tracks but I don’t want them engaged initially. Sometimes I’ll go ahead and engage them while composing and other times I’ll wait until mixing. So, for these tracks I have the inserts bypassed. I had it setup this same way when I was using Pro Tools. Pro Tools doesn’t have a way of having an insert on a track but turned off/deactivated (at least not that I’m aware of). Now (because of you) I know that I can do this in Cubase so I went through all the tracks that fit this criteria and I turned the inserts off. While doing this I watched the CPU usage go down and down. So, now (again, thanks to you) I have my template setup with all the tracks, inserts and sends pre-setup but yet in its initial open state it takes up much less CPU.

Thanks for the info!

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You’re welcome. I’m glad it helped.

Digging up old posts.

I know the individual plugins could be disabled. But that is not as good as disabling the track.

I have tested it on my machine. Exporting a 40-minute pure audio project offline would cost around 50 seconds.
If an FX track was added to the project, even without any active plugin on it, the export would take 2min, much longer.

I hope Steinberg will consider adding the ability to disable FX tracks.

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Further on this topic.

It would be even better if the de-activate function could be extended to all track types, including group, fx, and even folder tracks.

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+1 the ability to disable / deactivate all track types would be MUCH appreciated! Please Steinberg, include this feature in the next big Cubase update. Thanks!

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